Crafting with the Cricut
I received my Cricut Explore in the mail last week, and have been going crazy with it ever since! The machine came with a cutting mat, a silver marker, a sheet of duck tape, and a strip of vinyl. You also get a two week subscription that includes the majority of the images on the Cricut Design Space website. I’m still not convinced that a $10/month subscription is worth while, so I decided to cut out as much as possible while the images are free. Then I will probably buy the images as needed (most are only $0.99 each) after the subscription expires. So far I have made:
For the most part the Cricut has worked exactly as expected. However, I am realizing some unexpected costs such as:
- paper (card stock works much better than normal or construction paper–and is much more expensive)
- scoring tool– the scoring tool was pretty inexpensive, but was an additional item that I had not planned on buying. It is handy for showing where to fold cards and envelopes, but does not score deep enough to make a clean fold
- cutting mats–the Cricut came with a cutting mat, which lost most of its stickiness after about a week of heavy use. To continue using the Cricut I will either have to buy another mat or buy a spray adhesive to re-sticky the original mat.
- spatula tool–again, this is somewhat inexpensive, but still an unexpected cost. It is somewhat difficult to pull up the paper without bending or ripping it without a spatula, and almost impossible when working with intricate designs.
Despite these extra costs, I still think the Cricut will turn out to be a good investment. I have already used it to make personal thank you cards and small gifts for the kids who are participating in the summer reading program at my mom’s library. The images and letters are cut much more cleanly than I would have been able to do myself and the ability to make things as needed eliminates the problem of not having the right letters when using pre-cut sets. It still takes time to design each project, cut it out, peel it off the mat, and glue the layers together, but I still think it will be a huge time saver when making materials for several classrooms!
